Religion
by TangledAria
Summary: AU? Sex, Violence, Madness. Crazy time issues, as well. 'The price for your meddling is death beyond death.'


**Disclaimer**: Final Fantasy does not belong to me.   
**Rating**: AU? Sex, Violence, Madness, and one really gross description. Crazy time issues, as well.   
**Summary**: "The price for your meddling is death beyond death."   
**Author's Notes**: All the mini chapter titles come from the FFVIII OST, which can be found here. 

**Religion**   
by: TangledAria 

_"Even if you don't understand,  
Worship until the end."_  
**"Shuukyou"** by Shiina Ringo 

**i. under her control**

Her hand twists in his hair, her thoughts twisting his. He moves inside her, gasping as he climbs towards release. She allows him to, not because she isn't cruel, but because she is kind and caring. 

_Mine_, she thinks, _all mine_. And because he is hers, because he is her Knight, he hears everything she says, even those things left unspoken, the words she wishes him to hear. 

_Yours_, he answers, submissive and powerful, everything a Knight should be. _Yours_. 

**ii. the legendary beast**

_You can be my lion_, she tells him. And she sets him loose upon the world. He is ferocious and deadly, just as she promises. Cities and countries fall at her feet, felled by his blade. 

She makes Esther her home. She lets the former president live, a shadow of his former self. The time sorceress she kills; she lets her Knight take her apart piece by piece. She makes the president listen to her screams. 

Odine is nowhere to be found, but she remembers his laboratory and his strange machines. The part of her that's still human (_this housing_, she tells him, _is weak and ill-formed_) fears him. But the Sorceress fears no man who relies on petty science. Together they watch her soldiers take his laboratory apart. 

They live in the president's palace and they sleep in his bed, and she makes him watch as she destroys everything he's worked for. 

**iii. never look back**

He had died once, long ago. It had been a friend. But that doesn't seem quite right; after all, they only have each other. But they had called for her Knight, and she had laughed when he cut them down. 

"This isn't you!" they had cried. "This isn't either of you." An afterthought, because she knows she was never really one of them. 

He kills the other Knight first. She enjoys watching them fight, the flash of blade on blade. The other Knight taunts and provokes, but her Knight is silent. It doesn't take him long to kill him. The man with the gun is next, and her Knight is oh so clever, working his way from threat to threat. She has him leave the blonde woman for last. _She_ had hated her the most. _She_ was cold and uncaring, only waiting for her to fail. 

She smiles from her throne as her Knight advances. The woman cracks her whip. "Squall," she says. "Give me some sign you're still in there." That makes her laugh all the more. "I'm sorry," the other woman says, wrapping her whip around his neck. Her Knight buries his blade in her chest, pulling her close in the mockery of an embrace. The woman shudders with the effort of pressing a bloody kiss to his cheek. "I'm so sorry," showing more emotion than the Sorceress has seen from her before. It sparks along her skin, a premonition. 

The woman buries the knife in her Knight's stomach, all the way to the hilt. He gasps and looks down, and she can feel his pain through their connection. They fall together, the two of them locked in their embrace, and she can't understand how such an ineffectual weapon has damaged him so much. And then she knows. She screams her rage at Odine's meddling. 

It nearly takes her own life to bring him back. 

**iv. unrest**

They foster a rebellion, her loyal Estharian citizens. She cannot say she is surprised. 

She sends her soldiers to put it down; she will not waste her Knight on something so trivial. They bring back leaders, but not the one responsible. She lets her soldiers torture them until they break. The first one whispers the place of their birth, the second one tells the reason why, and the third one breathes the name of the one behind it all. 

She sighs and says to no one in particular, "I am beginning to regret letting him live." 

They find him in Winhill of all places, half a world away from Esther. He's in one of the houses, clutching the tattered remnants of a stuffed animal to his chest. Her soldiers push open the door, but she motions them back, finger held playfully to her lips. 

The icicle forms in her hand, spinning and growing with each icy whisper of her spellcasting. It catches him in the shoulder, breaking his heart. He flinches, but doesn't cry out, never letting go of the memory of his failures. She moves to stand in front of him, trailing black feathers and ice. He looks up at her, dazed, before slumping to the ground. 

He's breathing his last, and she leans forward to whisper in his ear. "You were a fool to think you could stop me." 

"Please," he chokes, blood on his lips, splattering her face. "My son . . ." He sobs brokenly. Her cold, dead heart constricts and she draws back with a hiss, betrayed. 

"Mine," she tells him, "He's mine." 

When she returns to Esther, her Knight is waiting. He bends under her fingers and does not break, and she remembers why she chose him all those years ago. 

**v. fragments of memories**

She dreams of a field of flowers under a blue sky and a soft breeze that stirs her hair. She dreams of sunshine and white clouds, of a boy who becomes a killer and a girl who becomes a monster. She dreams . . . (_You'll find me, I promise._) 

In her dreams, she is not a Sorceress, and he is not a Knight. In her dreams it is all some distant fantasy dreamt up by her idle mind. 

When she wakes, she is death incarnate. 

He lies next to her, perfect and whole, a living machine. He is hers to command, hers to destroy; she only has to wish it. 

She reaches out to touch his face. A spark of power passes between them and his eyes snap open. If she had been human, the sight of it would have been unnerving. 

But she is no longer human. 

She pulls him close and says, "Show me your devotion, Knight." 

**vi. silence and motion**

He shows his loyalty by breaking her heart. 

They pour over the hill, a thousand strong, SeeD upon SeeD in a rush of military might. She waves her hand and half of them die, crushed by her magic. The other half never falter and she knows someone must have trained them well. 

He's standing with her on the balcony, left hand resting on his hip, right hand free to pull the gunblade from its sheath. 

He kills a hundred men with a single swing of his blade, and she lets a lazy smile stretch across her face. 

When the SeeD manage to make it though her castle, she is waiting for them. She is not afraid, not with her Knight by her side. She puts her hand on his face, and when the SeeD break down the door, she does not remove it. 

"Sorceress Rinoa!" 

(_She remembers a waltz, and a kiss beneath the moon, the stars whirling overhead as if they were created for the two of them alone._) 

He kills and kills and kills until her castle is shining with blood. She is so proud of the thing she's created. He spins and whirls like a dervish, his mind no longer his own. 

She spins along with him, twirling in front of her throne. She never sees the blonde girl with the blue eyes, a long and deadly gunblade at her side. She doesn't see the first slash the girl takes at her Knight, but she senses the fire, the glorious swell of magic. It burns along his arm, melts through leather and skin and muscle and bone. She howls in rage, and even though she's too late to stop it, she pours her magic through their connection, ice and winter until his skin turns white. 

She is burning, burning. 

He switches his blade to his other hand and levels a swing that nearly takes off the girl's head. 

She watches them fight (the girl dodging, her Knight attacking), and cradles her arm to her chest. Her arm is untouched, whole and perfect and pale. Her Knight's arm is red and black and blistered, and she can see the bones of his fingers falling to the ground in little white pieces. 

Her own fingers ache. 

The girl goes on the offensive, swinging her gunblade in a wide arc. 

They lock blades and the girl's blue eyes flash. "Five hundred years," she says. "I have dreamed of this day." 

She clenches her hand and pours her power into her Knight. 

He is silent. She cannot remember the last time she heard his voice, not even to cry out in pain or pleasure. She misses the sound of his voice. 

The girl is crying, spilling her rage. "I made her teach it to me. Before _you_ killed her. I travelled in and out of time, the future, the past." Her voice is a hiss, sharing a terrible secret. "I learned it all. She had pictures of you in her desk, a boy with dark hair and a girl dressed in blue. You looked so happy, I couldn't believe you were the same people." She sobs and lifts the gunblade over her head. "But you killed them _all!_" 

She lunges. Her gunblade clashes with his and skates along the edge with a musical tone, before she breaks off again and moves back. 

"My mother thought the world of you," she says with tears in her eyes. She lunges again. Her Knight parries, but his movements are slower. 

It's only a moment's hesitation on her Knight's part, but she knows now: he'll never be hers again. 

**vii. don't be afraid**

The tip of her Knight's gunblade dips slightly, then falls to ground. "What was your mother's name?" he asks in a voice rough with disuse. 

The girl is sobbing openly now, weapon abandoned. "Quistis Almasy." 

The icicle forms in her hand, almost second nature now. She is frozen solid, down to her very soul. A smirk, and a single flick of her cold, pale fingers. 

She is not expecting him to move. She is not expecting him to push Almasy's brat out of the way and let that cold knife pierce his own heart. She is not expecting him to betray her. 

"How many times will you die?" she asks him. 

"As many times as it takes to bring you back," he says. 

Her heart clenches painfully and again she finds herself betrayed by her own body. "I can't bring you back this time," she says. 

"Then it's my turn to bring you back." 

She lays her head down on his chest and cries, for the first time, the last time. 

She doesn't hear the girl come up behind her, doesn't hear the whistle of the gunblade. 

She tastes blood and bile. 

She is nothing without him. 

"I'm done for," Rinoa whispers against Squall's chest. 

**viii. the successor**

A girl with silver hair and the world in her eyes. 

"Sorceress," the girl says. She reaches out with one hand for the black-haired sorceress slumped against her knight, shaking the other girl's shoulder, listening for the telltale flare of magic. 

"I am Ultimecia," the girl says. (_I am Ultimecia. Time shall compress. All existence denied._) "Pass your powers on to me, great Sorceress, and die in peace." And when that doesn't work, she lies and promises instead, "I'll avenge your fallen knight." 

Dying is as easy as breathing, Ultimecia knows. She thinks the other girl might be saying something, a name, a warning, she isn't sure. She cannot hear over the roar of magic in the air, the flow of power from one sorceress to another. 

When it's over, she turns to the SeeDs waiting behind her, her friends and loved ones. "It's over," she says with a smile and a sigh. "It's over." 


End file.
